State Has Cleanup Idea For Toxic Site Groundwater From Dump Would Go To Iron Bridge

July 25, 1986|By Mark Andrews of The Sentinel Staff

A state agency wants to clean contaminated groundwater from a former toxic waste dump in north Orange County by sending it through Orlando's Iron Bridge regional sewage treatment plant.

More than 200 companies that sent hazardous waste to the former City Chemical Co. recycling plant on Forsyth Road are being asked to pay for the cleanup.

The cleanup, which could cost $10 million and could take 15 years, probably won't begin for two years, said Ron Leins of the state Department of Environmental Regulation. The agency says the contamination poses no threat to drinking water.

Orlando officials are wary of the request because of concerns that industrial solvents in the groundwater could upset the delicate treatment process at Iron Bridge and cause the plant not to meet court-ordered treatment standards.

Preliminary plans call for DER to remove most of the volatile pollutants from groundwater near the dump site by pumping it out and forcing air through it. After that, as much as 200,000 gallons a day would be sent to Iron Bridge through the city of Winter Park's sewer system.

Orlando officials want DER to use carbon filters to remove more pollutants and protect the sewage plant. DER doesn't want to do it because it would cost more.

Last month a U.S. District Court jury in Orlando convicted City Chemical owner Arthur Greer on charges of illegally dumping hazardous wastes, false labeling and fraud. A federal judge later overturned the two convictions for illegal dumping, and charges that Greer had endangered his employees were thrown out.

Leins said DER will try to recover some of the cleanup costs from Greer. The company is out of business, however, so its customers will be considered liable for most of the costs. A Tampa attorney representing a consortium of City Chemical's customers could not be reached for comment Thursday.

DER already has spent almost $2 million to haul away 1,200 leaky drums, 100,000 gallons of stored liquids and tons of contaminated soil.

City Chemical employees testified in Greer's trial that workers were ordered to dump barrels of hazardous wastes onto the ground to comply with a court order limiting the number of drums that could be kept at the site.

The tainted groundwater is moving slowly eastward from under the dump site and is concentrated under the parking lot of a Sears retail distribution center at 3825 Forsyth Road, north of University Boulevard, said consultants for DER, which has 24 clusters of monitoring wells around the site.

The contaminated water is at least 60 feet deep and has moved about 600 feet east of the City Chemical property. The water is moving between 80 and 150 feet a year, said consultant Gary Horwitch of Environmental Science and Engineering in Gainesville.

Analysis of the groundwater showed it contains 19 chemicals and three metals. Concentrations of some of them are more than 100 times what is considered safe in drinking water. Most of the chemicals are solvents, which evaporate when exposed to air.

That is why the DER says most of the pollutants can be removed by spraying the water into a confined area at the top of a tower on the site and allowing it to trickle down through baffles.

But other chemicals, such as acetone, cannot be treated that way, and Orlando is worried about their effect on Iron Bridge's treatment processes. The city has been fined for failing to meet treatment standards and is under a court order to bring the plant into compliance by Dec. 20.

The city wants stronger assurances that the chemicals will not throw the plant out of whack, which could lead to more fines, said Tom Lothrop, Orlando's wastewater bureau chief.

There also are concerns that certain organic chemicals, which do not cause cancer by themselves, could become carcinogenic when combined with chlorine at Iron Bridge.

The city of Winter Park and a regional sewage transmission authority, which pipes domestic waste from four suburban governments to Iron Bridge, are worried about legal liability and effects the chemicals could have on their pipes, pumps and flow meters.

A DER study to try to answer those questions is expected to take six months.

Although groundwater may have to be extracted and treated for as long as 15 years, Leins said the worst of the polluted water would be cleansed in the first year or two.